


Rey Eyre

by John_Romeo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: #alwaysaslutforthebrontëbitches, Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst, Anyway who needs GCSEs, Do people still say smol?, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Kylo Ren is actually just my baby, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey is smol, Slow Burn, we're startin this thing boiii
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-05 00:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16357364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Romeo/pseuds/John_Romeo
Summary: This is the story of Rey, an assumed orphan and subject of an unhappy childhood. She lives with her guardian-if he could be called that- Mr.Plutt, who keeps her for the soul perpose of putting her to work on the highland farm. As a young woman, Rey yearns for a real life- like the ones the odd paser-by might have- and looks for a job to help her start that- and eventually finds one at Craitfeild Hall, owned by the elusive Mr. Ren.This is a Reylo Jane Eyre AU, set around the mid to late 1870s  (because the original was set around 1847 and it always bothers me that slavery was still legal in America at that time).Of course it doesn't matter if you haven't read the book Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë to (hopefully) enjoy this fic (although it is an amazing book which I highly recommend!!) in fact it's probably better from a reylo-y point of veiw, becuse that way you can't guess as well whats going to happen.Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or Jane Eyre.





	1. Plutt's Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lil' shorty for ya babes

Waking up with cold feet. My closest companion, the prevailing Knoydart wind, bit through my socks in the night. I heard my friends speaking to me, screaming- out of laughter or madness?-through cracks in the old frame of the window, I felt it touch me, and I shivered. I pulled my threadbare blanket around me tighter.  
Through the thin glass portal I could see my other familiars: a mass of grey marram grass over my Juggernauts shoulder and an ocean to match. I could not see any other life on the horizon. It would be odd if I had.  
"REY!"  
I think isolation would have suited me better if it really was that- isolation.  
Mr.Plutt, a man like an uncooked fist of ham and almost as old as the highland hills themselves, called me from the next room. I was a girl of only nine and even then I knew hard work. In fact, I think this time of my life was when work was the hardest, at least physically. I hurried to meet him. No shoes.  
"Rey." His calmness unnerved me, while reliving this, it still does.  
"Yes Sir?"  
"Have you seen Mr. Stapleton's bucket? You know he'll be expecting it back later today, he didn't mean for us to have it. You remember you weren't to use it, don't you girl?" Mr. Stapleton was a salesman specialising in remote communities such as our lone farm. He was a kind man, back then the only one of his kind, to my knowledge. He was an older gentleman but had a gayety about him which gave him a much younger air, and occasionally gifted me the odd ribbon for my hair that Mrs. Stapleton put in our crate for me. As I remember it, he must have left the bucket there a month or so before, when unloading bags of flour to Mr. Putt's doorway.  
"Yes Sir I never touched it, but kept it where it was, by the well outside the cattle barn" All this was true.  
"Miss you'd better hope it is"  
Indeed I did hope.  
Mr.Plutt walked in front of me, my wrist in his vice like grip, being pulled along like a rag doll. He stopped outside the barn which was just yonder the hill from the cottage, and I almost tripped into the back of him for how abrupt he was.  
"Well, its not here now, is it?" He said this is his Englishman's voice, trying to get some kind of rise out of me. He always said I though I was 'of better stock than him' because of his Scottishness and my Englishness. Allas, I did indeed think I was 'of better stock than him', but never for the fact he was a Scotsman.  
"No, its not." I replied shortly, verging on sharp.  
He grabbed me by the arm of my cotton dress "Don't you speak to me like that", he pushed me away, "where is it?". His pink skin was turning red as a soldiers uniform.  
"I said, I never touched the bucket, Sir"  
"You did though didn't you? Do you know what happens to liars, Rey?"  
I gave no reply.  
"They go to hell and are burnt for eternity. Do you want that to happen to you?"  
Again, I said nothing.  
"When people who told lies as children die, they will burn and live! Do you understand this, Rey?" With this, and my last silence, he hit my head with his rough palm.  
Meekly, I uttered "t'was only a bucket, Sir"  
God have mercy on my soul, I thought at any point his head would explode. Perhaps if I had not willed it to, it would have.  
"I am no liar."  
"Did you put the bucket down the well Rey?"  
This question took me by surprise. Why on earth would it be down the well?  
"No sir"  
"Go and get the bucket, Rey"  
I felt my body go rigid. My hands dropped from where they had been balled into fists at my sides. My heart sank into an otherwise unventured to pit. The well, even on a bright day you could not see to the bottom.  
"Rey, I am your benefactor. You would do well to obey me" he said it almost like a snarl. I thought, if he where the rat that he resembled, he would do well to stay out of the way of my boots.  
I started to back away, still facing him."No Sir, I won't do it. You can't make me" I felt tears prickle my eyes.  
He started to move in my direction, and for a moment I thought he was coming to me. He walked straight past and into the cottage. I heard bolts at the doorframe click into place.  
I waited out there for what must have been hours, sometimes wandering about the hills, occasionally banging on the door to be let in and to receive the same answer of "Get the bucket". 

When the sun was returning to the horizon again, I flew into a panic: throwing myself against the door, screaming at Mr. Plutt, begging him. I had heard the stories of the creatures that came out at night- the great, ruthless beasts and cunning, otherworldly beings quick as shadows- and I had no intention of meeting them. I was losing the light and my options narrowed themselves to one. Weeping, I sat on the edge of the well and threw a rock down it. The good news was that the rock stopped falling a lot sooner than expected, the bad news was that it when it did, it was met with a splash and the echo of water.  
I collected my breath and all my courage, crossed myself and asked God for protection. I reached for the rope suspended above the well and wrapped it around my fists. My descent was unceremonious, jolting and made my bones feel as brittle as my spirits. My own whimpers and crys where kindly amplified by the cold, damp walls and I had a terrible thought that if I where to die then and there, that I would be left in that pit, nobody would try to find me or weep for my loss. Perhaps that wouldn't have bothered me so much if I could have died on the hills, in my home. I think I could bare fading into obscurity then, fade into the earth.  
The stagnant water reached above my knees, causing my skirts to become heavy and weigh me down.  
I tried to feel for the bucket through the water, accidentally disturbing the layre of thick, foul smelling sediment on the well floor, between my toes. I hated what I was down there for. A bucket. I know Mr. Stapleton wouldn't have minded.  
Blessedly, at long last I found it, the damned thing, even without sight or calmness, and screamed for Plutt to come and get me.  
"SIR! I'VE GOT IT! I'VE GOT MR. STAPLETON'S BUCKET! LET ME OUT NOW PLEASE! I'VE DONE IT!"  
Nothing. I tried again but now standing on the found item. Still no reply. I looked up at the sky, It was nearing charcoal. I screamed and the heavens opened.  
Fifteen minuets or so later and my throat felt as though someone had been stripping it away with sandpaper. The water came up to my mid-thigh and the ceaseless rain mixed with my frantic tears. In my hysteria, I scratched up the sides of the narrow well only to be rejected with no purchase on the wall. I tried pulling myself up with the rope that was still attached to my fist and the top of the well, again to no avail.  
I thought, perhaps this was my Hell, and that in fact I had lied and just not known it. And that soon the water would come over my head and I would drown, but never die.  
I stopped trying to get out, fatigue got the better of me. I carried on crying for help and I felt the darkness around me. It felt like flames, like cold flames on the end of deaths arrow. I was being submerged in the stomach of a demon. My whimpers mingled with the rain.  
I must been like that for just over three hours since the sun had finally set. My guardian at last pulled my tiny, shivering frame up from the depths of horror's flask and let me inside.

He said only, "don't get the chairs wet" and with that blew his candle out and slumped off to his chambers. Oh how my blood boiled for that repugnant slug of a man. I hated him more than I hated anything, more than I hated the Devil, for at least Satan knew he was evil, and most of all I didn't have to depend on him. Every part of me wanted to go after Plutt and- well, do something, I hadn't really thought what but nothing friendly, I assure you. However I hardly had the energy to stand, and so I retired to my own room, still frozen despite my boiled blood.  
I took off all my wet things in my room, which doubled as a small storage space for various farm wares. I draped them over my night table and hoped that they would be dry for the morning. I didnt even bother to wash, I couldn't face it, so I stayed looking as though I had long black gloves on and black socks to match; I think I must have tainted my bed as soon as I lay on it. I was still shivering as I sunk into my cot, this time not from the cold, but from residual fear.  
I got no sleep that night. Although I was more tired than I had ever been, the thought of the narrow walls enveloping my eternal soul haunted me; I could not shake it. I felt like I would never be happy again.  
I clung to my soft doll as my hair clung to my face. Bessy, she was my only comfort in those days. She had a violet pinafore and dark yarn hair braided in two, if I am remembering correctly. I held her like I had never been held and lay still. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw the opaqueness of the pit, the way it almost seemed matte, like it could catch no light. Like it was endless. 

***

For a long while after, I found it hard to reconcile myself with that day. When I would wash myself in the North Atlantic shore, I would feel that darkness creep into my bones again. Or I would have to arch myself double all day, lifting stones to repair cattle pen's walls and I would feel like the air would start to squeeze me, compress me into a tiny crumb and break my back. Eventually though, I fell back into the rhythm of hard work: Up by daybreak, feed and then milk the cows first thing, tend the fields until the late evening when I had to gather a chicken or a fish from the stream for Mr.Plutts supper. Once night fell, I was to prey for an hour (and ask God to forgive such a sinner as I, ect ect) unless Plutt had become unconscious due to his..habits.  
Some days I do believe I thought that that was all life had to offer; four walls and half the day off on a Sunday. On other days, it was hard to keep to the routine as I knew in my heart that there was more, that there was more than just six people in this world, and Christ, I was going to find them. It was all I could do not to just set off at dawn with a stick and bindle for Bessy and a portion of bread to keep me going.  
I believe that if it weren't for this persistent hope, I would still be there today. Same old Rey, same old ripped apron and old well. I thank the stars every morning that I'm not.


	2. Moving Up In The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lovely run in with a lovely man gets the ball rolling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just had to teach myself HTML to upload this... the things I do for love

Waking up with cold feet. Slightly bigger feet; nearly a decade on and I still greeted my highland warmly- she was such an overwhelming deity. I felt somehow that when I looked out onto the hill, then the vast magnificent ocean, that I had to be out there.  
  
I felt this often- but that day was different. I felt a call, away from Plutt and the cottage, to people, business, nature, life. It was like someone had injected me with syrup made of fire and made me more than I was the day before. I had to move.  
  
"Rey! You're on sheep today! I want them all done by nightfall!"  
  
A familiar call from my guardian- my captor- my prison warden. I dressed quickly. I had forgone skirts for a while since then, Sir saying he wouldn't fork out ten shillings every time I grew, and so I was left with the old shirts from his earlier days and the odd pair of boy's trousers Mr. Stapleton would have in stock. I had to alter them myself, so they where always falling apart. The trousers I dressed in that day, I think where more darn than fabric. I looked every bit the dirty ruffian.  
  
"Just a moment!" I shouted back, lacing my rough leather boots up. The day brought the promise of winter, the autumn was unusually cold for the time of year. I felt a chill through my jacket. I was moving the sheep from the field into the barn as we anticipated a storm coming, and as a particularly hard and tiresome job, it was delegated to me.  
  
I had no sheep-dog to help me, only my wit and energy to keep the flock together. Sheep strayed in all directions: up the hill, towards the sea, towards to cottage.  
  
After two hours, give or take, I had opened the barn, which housed cattle on one side and sheep on the other, and had begun to herd them into the pens when I noticed a silhouette on the horizon. It was a horse and carriage to be sure, but Mr.Stapleton was not due around there for another two weeks, and I'd only seen two other caravans anywhere near our corner of solitude in all the time I can remember being at Plutt's cottage.  
  
Could this be it? A glimmer of hope sparked in me for a moment- for I wanted them to come nearer- but was promptly stamped out by reality- why would they come here?  
  
I persisted with my task, making sure their food and water troffs had been brought in and where suitably filled for the oncoming half a week or so. I looked on the horizon again- yes, sure as the gulls flew- my carriage was gone.  
  
I silently scolded myself for being so.. hopeful. I was cruel to myself. I banged the doors of the barn shut and slid down them, drew my legs up to my chest as I sat on the moss and dirt.  
  
I didn't cry, or scream or throw anything to express the anguish I felt at my extinguished hope, I just sat and blankly stared out at what could have been. That blip on the hill that rose for a second and dipped back again to hurt you. My ticket out if here. Again, I scolded myself; even if they had come over here, what would you have done? I thought to myself, dropped your sheers and stowed away in the back of their carriage? Made a new life for yourself? Yes, I'm sure you would have done that...  
  
I felt bland and grey, like all the colour and urge for life had been washed out of me, and my body hung out to dry. I got up and sighed. I tried to reason with myself to accept that I would stay here, make the best of it. The words felt like poison to me.  
  
I walked towards the sea, she was always there when I needed her.  
  
Terribly, I thought, to hell with Plutt and his fields. I got to the shore and removed my boots and then my socks. Same old holes.  
  
I walked into the freezing suds up to my knees, unfazed by my sodden trouser legs. I washed my face, my hands, and my feet, which took a battering on the uneven pebbled coastline I had back then.  
  
I moved in closer. I never got used to the immediate breathlessness that came with the cold of the ocean encasing the majority of my body, though it was not unwelcome. I liked the brief shock of the saltwater up to my waist, it made me feel alive. Like all my nerves where working as they should.  
  
The water was only occupied by the distant white horses and the creatures beneath (which I dared not think of while I could not see my feet or legs), it was so empty you could see the very curvature of the Earth.  
  
Sometimes the sky and the sea would meet at the same colour, and I would stand there, thinking I was on the edge of the world. I took my hair out of its three buns at the back of my head, drew my breath, closed my eyes and put my head under.  
  
I had gotten quite good at this over the years and could hold my breath for just over three minuets. I did this and felt serene, like I was nowhere, floating with no one to bring me out. I was motionless. Just living. Sometimes that was enough.  
  
Abruptly, I was taken from my peace by a harsh grip on my back. My mind raced at an instant; it couldn't be Plutt, could it? He can barely make it to the cattle barn, let alone the coast. How would he even find me out here? Besides, he was not strong enough to-  
"Miss, are you okay?" I gasped for air, trying to take in who this stranger was,  
  
"On my life I thought you where dead- oh thank God- I just- I just saw you under...and you didn't come up..and I-". We were both standing there, in the sea, two strangers. Before me was a man in a brilliant red coat with short, cropped hair, dark skin and kind eyes with a brow that was furrowed in.. concern?  
  
"Miss? Are you quite alright?" I realized I hadn't said anything to him, it took me a while to formulate any words. "... I'm Rey" I smiled at him, a new person. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I briefly entertained the idea that he was a ghost, or an apparition from my own mind, and that at long last the four walls and desolate expanse had taken it's toll, and I had finally gone mad.  
  
He chuckled and introduced himself as we walked towards the shore, "Pleased to meet you Rey, I'm Finley Smith" he shook my hand, "But you can call me Finn"  
"Good day Finn!" Suddenly all the possibilities flashed before my eyes, I searched the beach for a horse and carriage and sure enough I found one.  My flame of hope rekindled.  
  
"I was just passing through on my way to-"  
  
"I'm so sorry Finn, I have to ask you- is that your carriage?" Of course it was.  
"Yes, yes it is, why do you ask?"  
"Can I go with you?" This was my chance, I wasn't going to waste it.  
He faltered for a moment, "I'm sorry what do you mean?" I had not been around enough people to be socialized, but even then I knew this was rude of me. However, I simply could not bring myself to care.  
  
"Take me with you- or at least to the nearest town, please, I'll pay you for it, I just really need to leave here. I'm sorry to be so curt with you"  
  
He looked away for a moment, I saw my opportunity slip through my fingers like sand. It was like my life flashed before my eyes- not my past, but my future. I took both his hands in mine and looked him in the eye, hoping he could look into my soul and find how desperate I was "I'll be no trouble, as God as my witness, I will be so much obliged to you, Sir, Finn" I felt as though my mind was too fast for my mouth, I couldn't get the words out fast enough. There was a moment of suspended silence.  
  
"..okay, fine" his face lit up with a lighthearted smile and a slight chuckle that broke the tension my sudden intensity had created.  
  
"Oh my goodness! Thank you, oh thank you a million times again!" I shook his hand vigorously "you don't know what you have done for me"  
  
"Well, lovely to be of service"  
  
"Just wait a moment my friend, I'll be so quick, I just need to retrieve some things", and I scampered away without waiting for his reply.  
  
I practically waltzed all the way to the cottage, air on my bare feet and blood in my cheeks. I banged the door against the wall as I opened it, seeking my room to fill my bag made of hessian with my few necessities; a few pairs of socks, a couple of shirts and another pair of trousers, some books I had collected over the years on behalf of the sympathetic Stapletons (this was how I avoided illiteracy), sewing things and other small items.  
  
It was so strange, as though this bag contained the history of my entire life so far. I took one last look at my room. I thought about the time I'd spent there, and on looking carefully, you could see where notches had been carved into the walls around the the metal headboard of my bed, expanding out. Each one a week of my life.  
I closed the door to that room.  
  
I headed for my exit but stopped in my tracks before fully overcoming the threshold. Mr. Plutt.  I knew he was in the room behind me. The day had come when I would never see him again. A fire burned in me. Years of neglect and hardship surfaced and danced in my mind. Nights spent cold and hungry, wondering if my parents would ever come back for me. Days spent aching over a plough to ease the realization that they where not. A wasted childhood.  
  
I spun around like a marionette and marched purposefully to the door opposite threshold. I barged in with my shoulder and faced him. The troglodytic lump of a man was slumped over his desk chair adjacent to the dying fire, drooling slightly in his slumber. I took my liberties with a good twenty shillings from his desk draw. I then took the half empty glass of wine he had fallen asleep grasping and threw the contends in his face.  
  
He spluttered awake, too surprised to be angry straight away. "I am no longer held here, Sir" I spat at him, "I condemn you to have no one to harm but yourself, and I hope you will be very good at that.", He tried to interrupt me with an order to work,  
"you've had your chance to talk, Plutt, and now I have mine. My life will be dedicated to you- I will live in spite of your wickedness. These days have been trials that have only made me capable. Good-day to you, I prey no other person crosses your loathsome path again for as long as you might live" and with that, I hightailed out of there, leaving him to shout, "You'll be back! I know you will! Don't think I'll be waiting for you!"  
  
If there was one thing I could say and be certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was right, it was that I would never be back there. In that moment, I would have put my life on the betting table in order to say that.  
  
I ran like I had never run to my new friend and saviour, Finnly Smith. I danced onto the beach and for a chilling moment I could not see him. I felt physically sick and automatically jumped to the worst conclusion: that he had left me there. That I would have to go back up that hill, and resume my life under Plutt.  
The relief of seeing him, in the dunes, just feeding his horse, was all-powerful.  
  
  
***  
  
  
We passed villages, rivers and farms I had never seen before. We passed people. Life. Some waved and greeted us, some didn't. I saw fathers teaching their children about the best time to collect the wool from a sheep, I saw ladies milking cows in fuller skirts than I had seen (for I had seen next to none), little girls and boys in muddy clothes laughing.  
  
I always knew that there was more to life, but it was hard for me to adjust to just how big the world really was. And I hadn't even seen it all yet. Finn had never known anyone to be so apart from society. While we rode on, he tried to warn me about the world, and all the perils that came with it; cheats, liars, murderers.  
  
"I love how exited you are Rey, and I don't wish to scare you, I just want you to be prepared- not everyone is lovely in this world"  
  
I told him about Mr.Plutt and how I had grown up as a farm hand, and not a child. In my mind, I was fully prepared. I knew of bad people. To me, I had done my lifetime of suffering in one, and now the world would be kind to me. As you can guess, this did not work out exactly.  
  
We reached the town of Crannerton in the depths of the night, we had travelled so long in search of a substantial settlement.  
  
"You can leave me here, if you'd like", I told him on first coming into the town and dismounting the carriage, "But I've still got to pay you and we could both get a room for the night, I think I saw an inn down the way there.". I opened my palm to him with my note for twenty shillings. I was tired, and I expected Finnly would be even more so, seeing as how he had been driving for so long.  
  
He smiled and took my palm, closing my fingers around the paper, "Rey, I think you're going to need this more than I. I will keep traveling for tonight. There is a man that needs me, Dameron, and I don't know where he is yet but I must spend my time getting to him" he followed me off the carriage.  
  
"I hope you find him, Finn. And I hope he deserves you" He embraced me then, and it almost startled me. This was unfamiliar territory. But it was nice, and warm and comforting and I decided I liked hugs.  
  
"Good luck, Rey"  
  
"Thank you Finn, I am endepted to you, my friend"  
  
He mounted the car, and we parted. I hoped I would one day see him again. I still do.  
  
That night I took up in a small inn above a pub called The Vincent. I was surprised they where still open, it being almost one o'clock in the next day, however the warm light still flickered and the shantys were still uttered on drunken mouthes.  
  
I tossed and turned in the narrow bed that night. Not because it was uncomfortable, no, heavens knows this was so much better than where I had slept the previous night. No, that night I was simply impatient to start living.  
  
But how? What skills did I have that would give me a value to warrant a comfortable life? For that night, however, I would leave this for the morning.  
  
  
***  
  
  
A couple of days passed after my initial night at the Vincent Inn, all spent apriciating the wonders of not working, all the while trying to figure out how I would bring myself back to work. I woke the morning after my second day staying at the Vincent, eager to find what would become of me.  
  
I took notice of things I couldn't have done in the dark of the night- the powder blue of the walls, the crack in the window pane, the broadsheet newspaper folded in two on the desk chair.  
On further inspection, it was a local newspaper published two days before I picked it up, however it was not from around here, the last occupant of those rooms must have left it there. I scanned it as I ate the hard brown roll I had afforded myself for breakfast that day, the taste of which seemed to significantly inprove once I reached the end. Advertisements.  
  
The fine people at Bromly estate wanted a new footman.  
  
Peter Arton of Arton's Carpenters was looking for a person of good skill for a shop keepers role.  
  
And a Mrs. Shrewsbury of Craitfeild Hall was looking for a new groundskeeper. I had never belived in fate, but I allowed myself to belive that one time, that I was meant to see that advertisment.  
  
I borrowed some stationary from the kind woman running the bar downstairs, Mary Quinton (a young woman with yellow hair and pink cheeks who was very nice and who I liked a lot I must add), I set to work on a letter:  
  
Dear Mrs. Shrewsbury,  
  
  
I am writing to indicate my interest in the groundskeeping position at Craitfeild Hall. I asure you I have many a skill for the fixing of things and for outdoor-based work. I am hardworking and healthy, and feel that I would do well at Craitfeild Hall.  
  
  
  Yours faithfully,  
  Rey  
  
  
At this, I was stuck. I had no second name, that I knew of, and I would have sooner return to Plutt and beg his forgiveness than use his name.  
  
  
  Yours faithfully,    
  
Rey of Knoydart  
  
  
I preyed that would do. I was almost certain it was too short, that perhaps my lack of second name would only be pointed out by it's replacement (which at the time I thought of as making me seem quite refined), and that Mrs.Srewsbury would feel quite mistrusting of me.  
  
Craitfeild Hall- what would that be like?, I let my mind wander, perhaps cruelly getting my hopes up. I had no experience to tell me that a Hall would be something close to a mantion.   
  
I dashed to the post office at the street corner, envelope in hand. I loved the daylight, the busyness of even that sleepy town, I loved everything and I was going to get that job.  
  
Thinking back, it makes me smile how self assured I was, uncareing of the ofhanded looks of others who weren't quite used to seeing young women in trousers and mens shirts run amuck on their streets.  
  
I kissed the letter before handing it to an ever so slightly hesitant postman. I had been just in time it seems, another few minuets and he would have already left.  
  
In the mean time, my friend Mary offred me a job behind the bar with her. She said that when you're the only pub this side of Crannerton, the nights get a little bit much for just one barmaid.  
  
  "Now, a word of advice, you will be dealing with a lot of drunk men, all at once. They will be crass and crude but if they are ever disrispecting of you, you throw them out, understand? The rude ones will only ever get drunker and then their rudeness easily turns to violence. If it gets too much for you, I'll always be nearby, okay?" then she smiled at me.  
  
Mary Quinton was a few years older than me, I would say around the mid twenties mark, but she held herself like a stoic woman in her fifties, the way she always knew what she was doing and how to do it. She had a loud, booming voice when she wanted, but also a soft one she reserved for me, her mother Mrs.Quinton, and the odd non-drunkard that came through the door.  
  
I worked there all in all for about two weeks, each day becoming more certain that I would not be hearing back from Mrs.Shrewsbury again.  
  
On my thirteenth day there, I was all but ready to give up hope entirely until- "Rey!" my lively friend Mary shouted for me. I rushed down the stairs, almost missing a few steps as I was going so fast. I met her in the hallway.  
  
"Its for you, Rey" she was calm now, we both held are breath. I tried to be calm, starting to break the wax seal at a snail's pace to make up for the pace of my hearbeat.  
"Oh give it here" Mary took it from me, impatient and decisive as always.  
  
"Dear Rey of Knoydart," we both moved to sit at the foot of the stairs, "I write to inform you that there is a place for you here at Craitfeild Hall should you choose to except it." we both squealed in delight, embraced and I thanked the heavens for letting this happen. "I would hope for you to be here within the week. In case you where unaware, Craitfeild Hall is situated  an hour outside of Middlesbrough. We look forward to your coming and indeed hope you do well at Craitfeild Hall. Oh Rey, I'm so happy for you!" and we hugged again.  
  
Just as Mary got up with a mind to procure a celebraitory bottle of something, a terrible thought flashed through my mind,  
"A week", Mary turned, "One week, from the highlands to the yorkshire dales- I'll never make it in time Mary", she tried to argue with me in her little voice, "And I can't be late, I'm already unqualified enough, I didn't even give them a last name and-" She tried her big voice as I felt my lip shake, like a child,  
  
"Listen to me Rey. You can get there. I know you can, but the wind isn't going to carry you on it's sholders to Craitfeild Hall," she placed a gentle knuckle under my chin and made my hazel eyes meet her sky blue ones,  "Miss, I think you need to get a shift on.".  
  
By that afternoon I sat in the back of a carriage, opposite an old woman with her grandchild and without a single penny to my name. In fact, I was in dept to my friend Ms.Quinton, for she had payed extra money from her own pocket to ensure a speedy arrival at my new life, however I knew she would never take a repayment.  
  
However, sadly, I anticipated we would never see each other again, despite our bitter-sweet words at departure. An Anticpation I had never felt before buzzed in my heart and in my veins. I was to start again at Craitfeild Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so no Kylo yet but do no fret! He will be with us soon.  
> Thank you so much to everyone that read, bookmarked and kudosed (?) this- honestly it means a great deal :)  
> Also, this chapter is a lot ~meatier~ than the previous one, hope you're all okay with that


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